


bright star (would i were steadfast as thou art)

by fab_ia



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: ALSO just implied but trust me that's what i wanted, Alcohol, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, John Keats - Freeform, M/M, Spoilers up to episode 55, that one's subtle but... its there, thats actually a warning btw i hate keats witha PASSION, trans Jacobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/pseuds/fab_ia
Summary: "Have you ever felt so alive?"well.good question.





	bright star (would i were steadfast as thou art)

**Author's Note:**

> the title (and the poem throughout) are, of course, john keats' 'bright star'.

“Have you ever felt quite so alive?”

Words that spill from your mouth with a gun pressing into the skin where shoulder meets chest meets throat- these are the words that lead into the praises that you sing to your God, Warren, and you haven’t been religious for the last thirty-odd years, so what’s the point in pretending you’re some kind of devout, some kind of Eremite-

 

_ Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art- _

 

There’s a grin on your face as you pull the trigger, but you don’t hear the shot, all you hear is the wind in your ears and the sound of Jacobi’s laugh to your left as he wrestles a knife from the hand of one of the men that followed you up to the clearing, and all you see is white with a new-formed splash of garish red on the crisp, cool surface. Jacobi laughs- he laughs, and he laughs, because he’s just as much of a monster as you are, and he’s  _ enjoying  _ this, the blood that’s spilling from a gash on his arm, staining his jacket- he has never felt so alive, and neither have you.

You revel in the destruction, after all- embrace the carnage, nod at Jacobi as he stands from his hunched position over the man (now prone and spreadeagled on the ground, a look of abject horror on his face, frozen there forever), and you cock your gun once more.

“ _ Have  _ you?” you press, and Jacobi doesn’t even have to think before he’s shaking his head, wiping his split lip with one gloved hand as the other goes to the pistol at his side.

“Hell no,” he says. “This is your day job?”

“ _ Our _ day job,” you correct.

 

_ Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night- _

 

Maxwell does, in a way, make you into a sort of unholy trinity- which of you takes which place, that is always in doubt and remains a question, one that you ponder alone during long nights in hotel rooms, where ambient noise becomes the clicks of a keyboard and the loosening of screws, the hiss of a soldering iron, the breaths of your two best agents. Maxwell doesn’t look away from her screen- she has up a security feed, and is furiously typing something into a Notebook document, likely a virus to eat away at the defences of the company you three work to infiltrate- and you may not entirely understand her work, nor what it is that she’s working to accomplish, but you  _ are  _ glad she’s there to assist. She may not be the most personable of the three of you (true, you aren’t either, but you’re better at faking it than she is), but her razor wit and double-edged sword of a tongue can open doors that not even a soft voice and lazy drawl could ever dream of.

Jacobi is lucky- he can pass as normal better than either of you do, and you hate to use the word ‘normal’, really, so- human. Jacobi passes as a human being better than you and Maxwell do. Sure, you can put on a charming smile and a gentle voice, but there’s always something  _ off  _ about you that not even years and years of acting classes could ever fix. Maxwell is too clinical, too… almost too robotic.

She’d like that description, you think.

What she wants more than anything, really, is to be something  _ other _ than human, but she doesn’t want to be a monster like you and Jacobi (your prize, your golden boy) already are- no, she doesn’t want her spirit to be a creature with claws and teeth and more blood on its hands than should ever be seen by someone besides a surgeon in their lifetime. What Maxwell wants is to be a consciousness- she wants to be the person who finds that breakthrough that allows a human (“human”) consciousness to be transformed into ones and zeroes, to leave the fragile body that they were made behind.

You feel that Maxwell understands your religious metaphors better than Jacobi does- after all, her father forced her to commit enough of the Holy goddamn Bible to memory as a child, there’s going to be  _ something _ still there, all these years later.

 

_ And watching, with eternal lids apart- _

 

“Are you a monster, mister?” the little girl in the room asks you, and with your face covered as it is, wearing a visor that contains an earpiece and a black jumpsuit that is saturated with blood, the question has a different weight to it than it has all the times that Jacobi or Maxwell have asked it.

“Perhaps,” you mumble, and the girl looks so frightened, you almost feel bad, but you know that lying to children only ever does more damage, in the end. Look at Jacobi- the way he strives for praise, is like an attack dog, but in reality just wants to be told that he’s  _ good,  _ because his father left him to entertain himself unless said father had a few cans of beer too many and a temper that Jacobi’s natural curiosity managed to spark into a roaring flame-

Or Maxwell, and the grimaces whenever you pass a church, the way her lip curls when someone calls her pretty, and you wonder (because Jacobi’s stories can be earned with a drink and your praise, a warm hand on his shoulder, but Maxwell remains tight-lipped and resolutely silent)- you wonder what her family and the people she went to school with  _ did _ to her, to dampen and damage her spirit like this.

“Are you gonna eat me up?” the girl asks, voice shaking, and you think- you wonder-  _ what if? _

“No.”

“M-mister?”

“No,” you say again. Your gun- the handle of your gun is coated with rich, sticky scarlet. “No, I’m not.”

You don’t like children.

You didn’t like  _ being  _ a child much, either.

 

_ Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite- _

 

“What were you like as a kid, sir?” Maxwell asks, bored of her latest coding puzzle. Jacobi looks up from his book- you think this one is in Russian- and uprights himself into a seated position, frowning slightly.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, “you know what  _ I  _ was like, so… what about you?”

Is now the time to show the two of them- who so lovingly refer to themselves as the ‘wonder twins’, the affectionate siblings they never knew- is now the time to tell the truth? Or do you spin yourself deep into a web of lies, lest you share too much, risk letting onto the fact you know more about everything in the universe than they do?

“What was I like?” you hum, your voice slipping into what you’ve heard the two of them call ‘storytime mode’, and you feel your mouth slip into a grin. “Well. People called me  _ strange _ , can you imagine? Said I was… unsettling, I think Mrs Jones liked, the creepy kid from down the road.”

There’s a bottle of whiskey on the bedside table. You reach out, take a drink, close your eyes as the burn (the oh-so familiar burn) reaches you.

“I can see that,” Jacobi says, and you laugh. You laugh,because there’s no other way to show that you’re as fucked up as he and Maxwell are, just as much as them, and so you laugh.

 

_ The moving waters at their priestlike task- _

 

Someone- you can’t remember who (don’t care who)- asks Jacobi whether the two of you are together, once, and he stares at them with an expression you can only describe as a curious mix between confusion and slight amusement.

“If ‘together’ means ‘would kill you in a heartbeat if you fuck up’,” he starts, “then yeah, we are.”

“W-what? No, I mean-”

“Do I love him?”

That night, after the two of you do, in fact, gasp out the other’s name into the darkness (and you thank God that Maxwell isn’t around, this time), Jacobi leans his head on your chest and reads his book, while you absently trail your hands across his skin.

“This isn’t love, is it?” he asks, turning a page in his book. This time, it’s in German. “I mean, I don’t even like you half the time. You’re just… y’know?”

“I’m flattered.”

“Shut up.”

You grin. Jacobi runs a hand up the outside of your thigh, his lips still red and his hair still a mess-

“You’re insatiable,” you hiss, as he works a knee between your thighs.

“True,” he smirks. His forehead is damp with sweat, and his hair sticks to it as he leans up to meet your lips.

Not love.

It isn’t love, which you know the next time, when he tells you he hates you, and you grin, because your job has been done perfectly, now.

Monsters don’t love, and the two of you? You are, certainly, monsters. Humanity comes second to cruelty in your line of work.

 

_ Of pure ablution round earth's human shores- _

 

Earth is the planet of humanity, which might well explain why Jacobi and Maxwell seem almost overjoyed to be leaving it. Maxwell fidgets with her buckle, bounces her leg. Jacobi fidgets with the zipper on the leg of his jumpsuit.

Outside the window of the Urania, the blankness and the darkness of space are like home- you’re coming home, now, and there are no more rules as to what you can and can’t do, Warren, because this is the  _ real  _ no man’s land, no matter what you saw in Afghanistan, all those years ago- a stalemate in space cannot be solved diplomatically, and the only solution after that is a loaded gun to the head of the traitor, a countdown from ten and a bang that’s louder than you’ve ever heard it.

It’s exhilarating, really.

“They still alive out there?” Jacobi asks. Maxwell doesn’t- Maxwell isn’t even listening, because she doesn’t  _ care  _ if the crew are alive or dead, she cares about the state of the mother program, and whether she can help her (it) if she’s (it’s) too far gone.

“Who knows?” you say, and there are so many things that you  _ do _ know, but you can’t ever say, because that’s breaking the one rule that still remains, imposed upon you by Cutter himself- everything is need to know. Nobody knows more than they need to.

If Maxwell asked, if she cared enough about humanity and the memories of religion she holds in her heart, you would say Cutter was some kind of God- and she might snort and say “what,  _ merciful? _ ” and she’d have a point, but mercy and creation aren’t the only things that exist in life.

Destruction.

Chaos.

Justice, in a way.

 

_ Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask- _

 

Lovelace, who died years ago in a way Jacobi might call poetic, is alive, and she is  _ angry _ , glaring at you with venom and true fire in her eyes. You know things she doesn’t. Lovelace doesn’t like that- you’re winning the game that she only barely knows how to play, but you’ve known the rules your whole life through, and you aren’t about to let her get the better of you.

Challenge her to chess.

You’re going to win, Warren.

 

_ Of snow upon the mountains and the moors- _

 

You don’t like it when Jacobi’s silent- it’s an indicator of something being wrong, of the fact he’s made a mistake, but when the three  _ with  _ him are silent, too… it wasn’t on him.

“Who was it?” you ask, voice level and calm.

“There was… an incident,” Lovelace says. You listen to her explanation.

You stare at Jacobi, wonder if the twin scars on his chest are the same, if the razor-thin train-track lines on his thighs are still there, and you thank Lovelace, dismiss the rest, keep Jacobi with you.

It’s silent for three minutes before you press him against the wall, face flush against the metal and teeth biting into his own lip as he scrabbles with his hands for any sort of grip at all, panting and whimpering when you dig your nails into his scalp, wrench his head back, shouts when he hits the wall again.

“Are you the real Daniel Jacobi?” you ask, voice as light as if you’d been out for a stroll. 

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi breathes, voice thick and wet and heavy with the blood from his lip and his nose, eyes closed tight. The dark circles on his face make him look sickly. It’s repulsive.

“ _ Are you _ ?” you snarl, turning him to face you and, one hand on his shoulder, reach for the knife you keep at your waist. “Because there’s an easy way to find out,  _ Danny _ , and I’d hate to have to get creative.”

“Sir,” he says, voice thick with rage, now, with palpable fury and tension, “I’m a human fucking being!”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m not an alien!”

“Alright.”

He isn’t an alien, but nor is he human. You know it. Jacobi knows it too, because what he is is what you are, as well.

Monsters.

Victor Frankenstein would be proud.

 

_ No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable- _

 

You brought a book of poetry with you, to the Hephaestus. You ask Hera if she’s familiar with any of them.

“Some,” she admits. “Do you enjoy poetry, Colonel Kepler?”

“I do,” you say. “It’s like storytelling, you see, except somebody’s done it for you, and they’ve done it in a way that most people can’t understand the meaning behind it, in the end.”

“I understand,” she says, and you think that spending time with her has helped to humanise and soften Maxwell on her harsh and sharp edges, and you wonder why it’s so easy to talk to the members of their crew that aren’t really human at all.

 

_ Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast- _

 

“Lieutenant Minkowski,” you say, “I’m going to shoot Captain Lovelace in the head.”

Of course, it isn’t  _ really  _ Lovelace, because she died years before you even met her, and she’ll be  _ back- _ but nobody knows that, except you, and there is fear in her eyes, half-hidden by defiance as she taunts, jabs and spits.

You raise the gun.

There is no diplomacy in no man’s land.

You pull the trigger.

Shooting someone in zero gravity is messier than you thought it would be.

 

_ To feel for ever its soft fall and swell- _

 

The alien comes back with gasping breaths, a heaving chest, and nothing but venom on its lips. Minkowksi looks horrified- Jacobi’s eyes widen- Eiffel yells- Hera stays offline for the moment, and you just watch.

“That was nowhere near as long as I thought it would take,” you hum.

“What did you do to Captain Lovelace?” Minkowski demands, turning her gun (the one which killed little Alana, in the end) on you.

“That’s not Captain Lovelace,” you say, calmly.

 

_ Awake for ever in a sweet unrest- _

 

Blood seems brighter when it’s your own.

Screams seem  _ louder _ .

 

_ Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath- _

 

You never thought Jacobi would have the stomach to betray you, but here he is, giving Minkowski a gun and telling her to shoot you square between the eyes. It almost hurts.

 

_ And so live ever- _

 

“-or else swoon to death,” Cutter murmurs, his hands cold where they rst on the sides of your face.

“Hold still, Warren,” he says, pressing a few buttons just out of your sight. “This will only hurt more if you struggle.”

 

“Have you ever felt so alive?” you once asked Jacobi in the midst of a snowstorm, and as you close your eyes before you cry out in pain, you remember his answer, as though he were whispering it into your ear.

“Hell no,” you remember, and then there is white light, again, and searing, burning,  _ agonising _ pain.

**Author's Note:**

> please don't hate me this is the edgiest thing i've ever written and it's still just an excuse to avoid doing homework
> 
> but uh..
> 
> if you liked it you can yell at me on tumblr @sciencematter... uhm, yeah? ty for reading?


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